Is Matt. 16:23 (“get behind me, Satan”) a proof-text against Peter’s primacy?

ason Eng­w­er at Pseudoblogue (he calls it Tri­ablogue for per­verse rea­sons known to him­self alone) revives this com­mon argu­ment in a blog post of Jan­u­ary 15. Typ­i­cal­ly a Protes­tant will claim that it’s incon­gru­ous for Jesus to give Peter author­i­ty over the whole Church only to turn around five vers­es lat­er and rebuke him and call him “Satan.” “But Alt,” the Protes­tant will say. “Am I real­ly sup­posed to believe Christ gives Peter infal­li­bil­i­ty, and the very first thing he does with it is to claim that Jesus will nev­er be killed and rise from the dead?” My answer is you’re con­flat­ing two sep­a­rate ques­tions. Matt. 16:18 isn’t about Peter’s infal­li­bil­i­ty but his pri­ma­cy; and even if it were, the Church does not teach that popes are infal­li­ble before they become pope. But if the point is just that Peter was weak and stu­pid and erring, that’s well-known. It’s well-known that all human beings are weak and stu­pid and erring, so the Protes­tant is in the unen­vi­able posi­tion of just hav­ing proven that Peter was a human being. I con­grat­u­late them on their pro­found insight. I’m not shak­en, how­ev­er, by the dis­cov­ery that God choos­es weak and stu­pid and erring peo­ple for posi­tions of great author­i­ty. There’s no one else for him to choose.

WHO SINGLED OUT PETER?

But Mr. Eng­w­er, who like many pseu­do blog­gers before him attempts to be clever, has his own approach. He denies that Christ “sin­gles out” Peter for any spe­cial office in v. 18 on the basis that, if that were true, Christ also sin­gles him out when he calls him “Satan.” If v. 18 teach­es Petrine pri­ma­cy, why does­n’t v. 23 teach Satan­ic pri­ma­cy? Eng­w­er real­ly thinks our minds will be dazed by this sort of ques­tion.

For one thing, Peter can be sin­gled out in vers­es 22–23 with­out hav­ing any rel­e­vant sort of pri­ma­cy. It could be, and it prob­a­bly was the case, that Peter was sin­gled out in vers­es 22–23 because he sin­gled him­self out by speak­ing up. It would­n’t make sense for Jesus to respond to Peter by talk­ing to Thomas.

No, but Mr. Eng­w­er is try­ing to read that obser­va­tion back into verse 18. In an ear­li­er post from Jan­u­ary 12, he wrote that Peter “sin­gled him­self out by respond­ing to Jesus’ ques­tion. It would­n’t have made sense for Jesus to respond to Peter by talk­ing to Philip.” Because Eng­w­er makes this obser­va­tion twice, I con­clude he thinks it’s espe­cial­ly clever. Appar­ent­ly he for­gets that Philip could­n’t have respond­ed to Jesus in the way Peter did. We know this because Jesus him­self said so.

When Jesus came into the coasts of Cae­sarea Philip­pi, he asked his dis­ci­ples, say­ing, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

And they said, Some say that thou art John the Bap­tist: some, Elias; and oth­ers, Jere­mias, or one of the prophets.

He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the liv­ing God.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar­jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heav­en.

Accord­ing to Jesus, God the Father sin­gled Peter out by giv­ing him a spe­cial rev­e­la­tion. Philip could­n’t have respond­ed, Nathaniel could­n’t have respond­ed, John could­n’t have respond­ed, none of the eleven oth­ers could have respond­ed, because God revealed it to Peter. God sin­gled Peter out.

PRIMACY VS. DIVINITY.

“But Alt! Does this mean Satan was sin­gling Peter out in verse 23?”

For­tu­nate­ly we don’t need to spec­u­late about such weird things because, again, Christ tells us oth­er­wise. “You are set­ting your mind,” he tells Peter, “not on divine things but on human things” (NRSV-CE). He does­n’t say, “Satan told you this, not flesh and blood.” Rather, he says, “This is just how flesh and blood thinks.” Pre­sum­ably Thomas could have said what Peter did here; but Peter was always the lip­py one.

Mr. Eng­w­er agrees:

It does­n’t fol­low that Peter was sin­gled out because of being more Satan­ic than any­body else or some such thing. … [W]e con­clude that a Satan­ic pri­ma­cy most like­ly isn’t being referred to.

I’m glad to know no one believes in any such beast as a “Satan­ic pri­ma­cy.” But Mr. Eng­w­er is try­ing to take the West­min­ster Con­fes­sion to mad­cap lengths. Here’s what I mean. The West­min­ster Con­fes­sion posits that Scrip­ture inter­prets Scrip­ture, and that if one pas­sage is unclear, a relat­ed pas­sage will clar­i­fy the point. Thus Eng­w­er attempts to have Matt. 16:23 inter­pret Matt. 16:18. Since there is no Satan­ic pri­ma­cy in Matt. 16:23, Eng­w­er con­cludes there can’t be a Petrine pri­ma­cy in Matt. 16:18.

Except that what Mr. Eng­w­er under­stands about verse 23—Peter is no more or less Satan­ic than any­body else (at least until Satan entered Judas)—doesn’t apply to verse 18. Christ express­ly says that Peter’s words were not like any­body else: Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in Heav­en. What Peter said in verse 18 set him apart from “flesh and blood”; what he said in verse 23 made him just like “flesh and blood.” The lat­ter verse does­n’t work as a gloss on the for­mer.

“But Alt! If Peter can’t stop think­ing like flesh and blood, how can he be the one to lead the uni­ver­sal Church, like Catholics say of the pope?”

Well, you know, this is com­e­dy. Christ says to Simon, “Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my Church,” and the very next thing he says to him is, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Maybe you need to be Catholic to laugh at this.

In fact the Church does­n’t teach, not at all, that hav­ing pri­ma­cy or infal­li­bil­i­ty means you stop being “flesh and blood.” Popes are weak and stu­pid; this is not news to any Catholic. Abra­ham was weak and stu­pid; Moses was weak and stu­pid; David was weak and stu­pid; Peter was (and is) weak and stu­pid. That’s not an argu­ment against pri­ma­cy, it’s an argu­ment against divin­i­ty. But no one claimed Peter was divine.

I don’t need to set out to prove pri­ma­cy is true (I can do that else­where) in order to show that Matt. 16:23 does­n’t dis­prove it—at least, not on the grounds that Mr. Eng­w­er thinks it does.

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Note. Read­er Jonathan Pre­jean adds: “What’s espe­cial­ly iron­ic about this is that Peter was, in fact, sin­gled out by Satan for spe­cial atten­tion, which is almost cer­tain­ly behind this rebuke in Matthew’s Gospel. [In] Luke 22:31 [Jesus says] “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demand­ed to have you, that he might sift you like wheat.” Jesus is rebuk­ing Satan for tempt­ing Peter, not Peter for being Satan. If Jesus want­ed to accused Peter of being a child of Satan, He cer­tain­ly had no qualms about doing that; see, e.g., Judas, the Phar­isees.” This is an appro­pri­ate use of Scrip­ture-inter­prets-Scrip­ture because Pre­jean uses Luke 22:31 to shed gen­uine light on Matthew 16:23, not to avoid a read­ing he does­n’t like.